Infectious Disease
Overview
Discovery Themes at The Ohio State University
BOLD.
ENGAGED.
DISRUPTIVE.
CATALYZING.
INNOVATIVE.
PARTICIPATORY.
LIFE-CHANGING.
COLLABORATIVE.
SOLUTIONS-ORIENTED.
Introducing Discovery Themes
Our world faces grand and complex challenges. Solutions are hard to
come by and require brilliant and bold thinking—collaborating across all
disciplines as never before.
To find durable solutions to the most compelling issues, The Ohio State University has
launched Discovery Themes, a significant investment in three thematic areas in which the
university will make a global impact:
Energy and Environment: Ohio State faculty from virtually every specialization are
working together and with experts beyond the university to lead the way in developing
scientific and policy responses to the global need for energy and the associated effects
on the environment.
Food Production and Security: Experts in food, agricultural and environmental sciences
as well as business, health sciences, law and other areas are working to enhance the
quality of food and animal feed and ensure an adequate, affordable and safe food supply
for the global population.
Health and Wellness: Ohio State is the only university with seven health sciences
colleges and an academic medical center. This concentration of health experts and their
collaboration with colleagues throughout the university creates critical mass to address
issues such as disease prevention and response, community health, and health systems.
As the nation’s most comprehensive university, Ohio State is able to develop solutions as
global as the challenges they answer. The solutions have many dimensions—technology,
logistics, ethics, policy and more. They require sophistication in focus and a collaborative
approach to be effective—to produce translatable results while also building new
knowledge and educating the problem-solvers of tomorrow.
Infectious Disease Detection,
Treatment and Prevention
Infectious diseases are a leading cause of mortality worldwide and a major threat to our food
supply and natural resources—particularly with the emergence of new and invasive pathogens.
Ohio State is prepared to make the prevention, detection and management of infectious diseases
a priority as a part of its Discovery Themes initiative.
Through an unprecedented investment, the university seeks to hire numerous new key faculty—
both up-and-coming and senior faculty at the tops of their fields—to work alongside Ohio State’s
180+ renowned infectious disease faculty and research teams. This new group of experts will
represent 22 disciplines, spanning human, animal and plant health and organize their focus within
five areas: antibiotic discovery and optimization; treatment and prevention of emerging viruses;
immunity to pathogens and other microbial communities; pathogen emergence; and social
networks and health policy.
Together, researchers will work to understand the interactions among hosts, pathogens and the
environment that result in disease, including drivers of pathogen evolution and antimicrobial
resistance, animal reservoirs, host range and immunity, as well as the impacts of infectious
diseases on natural and agroecosystems and a sustainable food, fiber and biofuel supply.
Drawing on the successes of Ohio State’s existing Public Health Preparedness for Infectious
Disease program (phpid.osu.edu) and support from other Ohio State groups, centers and industry
partners, this project will continue to transform Ohio State into a world leader in infectious disease
research, leading to new discoveries and real-world solutions that will improve the health of
people and ecosystems across the globe.
Emergence, Surveillance and Predictive Modeling
Emerging viruses
Emerging viruses at the human-animal interface
Molecular epidemiology – zoonoses
Medical entomology
Emerging infectious disease ecology, disease ecology
Ecosystem health
Predictive ecosystem modeling
Evolutionary biology
Virus discovery
Biosensors
Treatment and Prevention
Social networks
Health policy
Systems biology – therapeutic leads
Antibiotic pharmacology
Drug discovery – viruses, bacteria, protozoa
Drug resistance
Drug delivery systems
Vaccinology, animal models
Adaptive immunity: host genetics and microbiomes
Immunity to viruses
Immunity to fungi, intracellular bacteria and protozoa
Ohio State:
Where Opportunity Thrives
Ohio State is a dynamic community of incredibly diverse people and
resources. With the world-class Wexner Medical Center, 15 colleges
and 210 academic centers and institutes, the university offers students,
faculty, staff and communities a tremendous scope and depth of
opportunity across various fields and professions.
Our university is the only one in the U.S. that convenes all seven health science colleges,
as well as the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, on one walkable,
easily navigable campus. Experts in hundreds of disciplines exist in close proximity and
embrace the type of transdisciplinary collaboration that is required for meaningful discovery.
Researchers in the infectious disease arena at Ohio State are members of numerous multiand interdisciplinary Board of Trustees-approved centers, including the Center for Microbial
Interface Biology (cmib.osu.edu), the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center
(oardc.osu.edu), the Center for Retroviral Research (vet.osu.edu/retrovirus-research), the Center
for Applied Plant Sciences (caps.osu.edu), and Nationwide Children’s Hospital Center for
Microbial Pathogenesis (nationwidechildrens.org/microbial-pathogens).
Our faculty utilize
state-of-the-art
resources that
maximize their ability
to drive innovation,
including:
Campus Chemical Instrumentation Center
Comprehensive Cancer Center Shared Resources
Ohio Supercomputer Center
Data Analytics Collaborative
(also part of the Discovery Themes initiative)
Select Agents BSL3 facilities
Plant Microbe Genomics Facility
Plant and Animal Agrosecurity Research Facility
Drug Discovery Institute
Technology Commercialization Office
Industry Liaison Office
And more…
Creating the Solutions-Based
University of the Future
Ohio State is creating the 21st-century university of the future through
our Discovery Themes, as we seek solutions to our world’s most
pressing challenges at one of the nation’s most comprehensive
research universities.
In addition to their academic potential and demonstrated successes, the faculty who
join our ranks through Discovery Themes will be notable for their commitment to
inclusion; collaboration with other faculty, external partners and industry; and diversity.
Along with our current faculty experts, they will discover and apply new knowledge to
enhance the university’s teaching, research and outreach.
And as they pioneer new theories, applications and approaches that accelerate
discovery, this larger critical mass of faculty will create the solutions-based university of
the future, at Ohio State.
For more information about opportunities in Infectious Disease Detection,
Treatment and Prevention, please visit go.osu.edu/DTInfectiousDiseases.
JOIN THE DISCOVERY THEMES CONVERSATION
DiscoveryThemes
@DiscoveryOSU
http://go.osu.edu/q7Z
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Learn more about how Ohio State is changing the world at discovery.osu.edu.
Learn more about how Ohio State is changing the world at discovery.osu.edu.